small breeding setup

zof

Ohh I see, no my slow drip will only be to remove water from the entire system so there is rooms for the automatic top off to fill it back up, the drains coming from the tanks will be huge 1" holes free flowing back to the sump. It will basically drain as much as is pumped in from the sump. I was also thinking about the power cutting off and some crazy chain of evens happening that causes the sump to over fill, was thinking about adding a drain hole on the sump to direct any sort of over flow of water like that.

And after thinking about it for a while I think I'm going to keep my constant water change auto top off system in the setup, in the past month or so there has been a ton of co2 in my water which has dropped my tap down to a pH of 7 from being at 8. I think the constant water change will adjust the water parameters so slowly there will be no tanager to any sensitive fry plus it will give the water a chance to let the co2 escape.

I was also thinking instead of hooking a valve up to a tank to drain you could just attach it to the pump return hose and let the pump do all the work.

I might go pick up the rack and some other stuff tomorrow, we will have to see but I already got some tools and clamps for the project today at harbor freight.

I appreciate all your guys input, its given me a lot to think about and plan, we'll see how this comes together now I just got to figure out what pump I want to buy... don't want to spend to much but I also don't want to be spending that money again a year from now to replace a bad pump.

onefish2fish

glad i got you thinking. this is a great idea. please take pictures and post your progress on this build. im interested.

SinCrisis

just another comment, for most breeder setups i have seen, a lot of them use sponge filters in their tanks and the air comes from one powerful airpump. This should not be more expensive than a unified sump, and may actually be cheaper.

It will ensure that each tank is contained so if one crashes not all of them will crash. Additionally, the flow will be softer, which is better for most fry. The main con is that you need to top off all your tank individually and wont have an auto-drain system.

badxgillen

thats what i run...a bunch of $5 dollarr spongefilters and a single air pump..you can get a larger rubermaid container for a resevoir that your pump goes into to fill the tanks ...just refill the resevoir before water changes and use a siphon tube attached to the pump to return water to the tanks you cleaned or need topoffs.

Christople

whats a sump

SinCrisis

its the large wet/dry filters you see under larger tanks, often marine tanks use them too, kinda hard to explain, just google it.

onefish2fish

not all sumps are wet/dry. this is pretty common in freshwater though, but since you mention marine, i wouldnt use a wet/dry sump. id just take a used tank and silicon my own baffles in. the pre-made ones are nice and look fancy but the bio-balls are not needed in marine, however on a freshwater tank, bioballs work well.

SinCrisis

well most sumps are wet/dry.. at least the ones ive seen are wet/dry. They're basically a tank that acts as a filter and allows you to put your equipment in there so minimize equipment in the tank. I see more marine tanks use it than freshwater, most freshwater tanks i see use canisters more than sumps unless its a very large setup.

zof

The reason I'm going after a sump is for a couple reasons, the extra water volume for tanks that might get heavily over populated (two tier, one is the extra water in the sump the second is to even out the fish load among many different tanks), easier to manage the biological filter as I don't have to move filters from empty tanks to occupied tanks to keep the bacteria alive (only helps in a multiple tank setup), and the ease of maintenance with a multiple tank setup.

Of course as others have pointed out in a multiple tank setup it has the downside of all the fish sharing the same water, but since this will be a breeder setup the risk is minimal as long as the breeding pairs are quarantined effectively.

Oh by the way I think I've decided on my shelving, going to get 48" x 24" x 72" shelving you use in the garage, now I need to decide on a pump this weekend and containers to be used as tanks, which is harder then it sounds as plastic storage containers come in weird sizes.

SinCrisis

How will you run 3 tanks with 1 pump? wont the higher level tank lose pressure?